Why do so many of the retro/Mego figures have oversized noggins?
Looking at the pics of prototypes for the 8" Six Million Dollar Man figures at SDCC, something I have wanted since the 70's (I had the 13" figure, but he couldn't team up with my 8" Justice League), I'm seeing the same problem so many of these figures have had: huge melons on top of their shoulders.
I'm completely mystified as to where this came from; the original Mego figures had a grand total of four figures out of all their offerings with huge, out of scale heads, namely the CHiPs figures and Daisy Duke (maybe five if you count Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, but he's borderline because his head is an odd shape to begin with). The other heads looked normal on the bodies, not macroenchephalic like these.
Some of the retro figures look fine, like the Dark Shadows or the Trek figures. But so many are looking like the awful Space 1999 figures from several years ago, where it seemed they stuck a 12" head on an 8" body.
I saw one picture on an e-tailer site of Steve Austin with a fairly normal head, but that's not what they were showing at SDCC. I was really excited about the bionic figures, but that enthusiasm has waned after seeing Oscar with a head that would make the Leader and Hector Hammond jealous...
They put a sign out at comic-con addressing this very issue. The "proto-types" displayed had oversized noggins that would shrink once the production models were produced. The thing that bothers me is the cheap pale transluscent skin tone vinyl that Biff Bang Pow is using for production.
Ah, thank goodness for shrinkage, although some of the finished product I've seen in this style is still Hector Hammondish. Still, thanks for giving me some hope here; Steve and Jamie were my favorite shows growing up, and having an actual posable Bigfoot (the original couldn't even be posed running with the v-crotch he had) is something I've waited for decades to own. I'm still reveling in the DVD sets Universal finally put out, and I still think the slow motion for the 60 MPH running was a brilliant way of doing things in an era where TV special effects were almost non-existent. Besides, it looks cool. 